Paul D. Boehm

Biography

 As a consulting environmental chemist and strategic advisor, Dr Boehm has consulted with and advised industrial, legal, and government clients on scientific matters involving many aspects of chemical contaminants in the environment as they pertain to regulatory issues and legal claims. He is a leading practitioner and a recognized expert in the fields of natural resource damage assessments (NRDA) for oil spills and contaminated sites; the environmental and forensic chemistry of crude and refined petroleum and natural gas geochemistry polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and other organic chemicals as applied to site and contaminated sediment investigations. His practice also directly involves the environmental fate and transport of chemicals and exposure assessments. His work has focused on industrial sites adjacent to urban waterways, oil refineries, fuel terminals, oil pipelines, and offshore platforms; manufactured gas plants (MGPs); land and sediment Superfund sites; pulp and paper mills; other active and legacy manufacturing sites; and natural gas storage fields. Many of his projects also involve aspects of historical reconstruction of chemical releases; chemical fingerprinting; divisibility and apportionment; allocation at CERCLA and OPA multiparty sites; and chemical exposure and injury assessment. His extensive knowledge of the strategic application and practice of environmental chemistry and forensics has contributed to the published literature and to legal matters on source identification, fate, and transport of PAHs, PCBs, other chlorinated organics, solvents (TCE, PCE), stable isotopes, and metals. He was one of the early and formative practitioners in the area of petroleum fingerprinting.  Dr. Boehm is well-known internationally in the field of aquatic and marine pollution, especially oil spill scientific assessment, response, NRDA, and liability estimation. He has published extensively on the fate and effects of many major oil spills in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East (e.g., Amoco Cadiz; Haven; Ixtoc 1; Exxon Valdez; Arabian Gulf War spill; BP - Deepwater Horizon). In the NRDA practice area he has also been engaged in numerous cases at CERCLA and State sites, where he has provided expert technical support on exposure and injury assessment; the determination of baseline or background; divisibility and apportionment of contamination, including the applicability of CERCLA's "petroleum exclusion." Dr. Boehm is an experienced consulting and testifying expert on a range of legal matters involving environmental claims: apportionment and allocation; NRDA; remediation and insurance cost recovery; toxic torts; class action cases; and maritime cases under MARPOL. Dr. Boehm has published extensively in scholarly journals and been appointed to serve on several national panels on environmental/ marine pollution and has served on several National Research Council panels. 

Research Interest

 Environmental & Earth Science